"Motherhood is all about being a calming presence to a child. Providing brownies, breast milk & clean bedroom floors are only the nice extras." My Friend Abigail @ Abigail’s Alcove

Sunday, May 4, 2008

He Created Them Male and Female and Blessed Them.

“Now women are just the same as men.” Says my Father to round out his argument that women have arrived at parity with men in the legal profession. “When they first started they were terrible, weeping and week, but now they are the same as men.” This on the heels of a discussion of the deterioration of our society in general as we sat around the dinner table after my Niece’s first communion. It was just lobed up there so pretty, I couldn’t let it pass. Deep breath, glance down at the table and pray, “Come Holy Spirit”.

“Dad, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing, for women to be just like men. I’m not so sure that isn’t one of the very issues undermining the fabric of our society. I’m not so sure that the very foundation of the problem isn’t the advent of artificial birth control and the radical feminism that followed on it’s wake insisting that women should be just like men. It seams to me that to devalue the very nature of what it means to be a women to suppress our natural inclination to nurture home and family and to alter our very bodies to accommodate the insistence that we be just like men is ground zero of the destruction of our society. Moreover, the Church saw it coming though our American clergy has been rather quiet, it has always been the Church’s position that birth control would lead us to exactly where we stand in terms of the dedregation of the family. Once the family is undermined the very underpinnings of our society have been removed and chaos ensues. Furthermore by removing God as the baseline of morality individual opinion becomes the baseline of morality. Without Truth anything goes.”

A hearty Amen from my Brother at the end of the table, the brother I’m not as close to so I wasn’t sure how he would take my little diatribe. “No, no Anne, you are wrong says my Mother, men do dishes now and laundry and help around the house, and women used to be treated as chattel.” “I’m not talking about sharing domestic tasks Mom, I’m talking about an expectation that women elevate professional achievement above the care of her husband and children.” “Well look at your brother (the other one, who’s position on such things I am much more familiar with) Heather works and what you’re saying is disproved right here in this family.” “No Mom” Heather chimes in, “I only work when the kids are in school, and only then just for something to do during the day. My family always comes first.”

With that the little dinner party ended, my parents befuddled, my generation united, and the kids with questions after the grandparents left. My parents were both born in the early 1930s. In their lifetimes society has undergone radical change. Concurrent with that their Church shifted radically in the aftermath of the second Vatican council. Not the doctrines or dogmas of the faith, but the practice of the faith, the day in day out rhythm of Parish life shifted. My parents have been carried along by the currents of American culture, and in the process have lost their marriage and their faith. This evening, their kids lowered a lifeboat from the barque of Peter, on a search and rescue mission. Hoping to bring them back to Jesus the same way they brought us to Jesus, hoping to close the Sacramental loop from Baptism to Last Rites via a stop for First Communion along the way.

8 comments:

This scenario sounds so familiar. In some ways it's so sad to see what happened to the people of the "me" generation and how their outlook on life led them so far astray, but it's inspiring to see that the next generation has learned from their parents' mistakes. I definitely see a returned to orthodoxy in the younger generations.

In my case I don’t feel like I learned, I feel more like I was taught by a gift of God. For my own part I had no intention of shifting from the rather materialistic lifestyle in which I was raised. Sometimes when I consider where I am vs. where I though I was going I can hardly recognize the landscape.

In the case of our parents I get concerned for the danger of mortal sin’s impact on their souls. Then I consider St. Faustina’s writing and have hope in the Lord. Still their lives would be more peaceful if they were to return to the Lord on their own, but his ways are not our ways, and his timing is not our timing.

Wonderful post! I hope I'm similarly as brave with the words of the Holy Spirit during my family visits this May.

I wanted to thank you so sincerely for your kind commments on my post today. I do wish we lived closer! I know that my kids would love to have an "Aunt Anne Marie" to visit. Your kindness is especially appreciated since I know that you'd trade places with me in a heartbeat on any of my "hard" days.

If I could ask for a favor. Please pray for my best friend in choir, Theresa. Her husband suffered a spinal injury yesterday after falling down some household stairs in the dark. He underwent 8 hours of spinal surgery at John Hopkins today.

Thanks, and I am one of the cooler Aunt’s on the planet if I do say so myself. As such I have spent quite a bit of time with the little cretins so much so that I truly know the joy of being able to hand them back to their parents after some of our wilder weekends together, close the door after they all pack into the van, and smile and wave as they sashay down the drive allowing peace to once again permeate my home. The younger they were the wilder the weekend.

I will keep your friend in prayers too.

Jenny:

I was just sampling some of your material. If musicians can do it so can I.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen on Womenly Virtue

“To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”

About Me

In the beginning (2006 or so) I blogged about our adoption process. We home studied, we got the training to become foster parents, we waited, we said yes to every group of kids the agency spoke to us about and …..NOTHING HAPPENED. Zip, zero nada.
So I changed my blogging focus to living a life of fidelity to Christ and his vicar the Pope and blogged about infertility, and miscarriage and living life from a Catholic perspective.
Then one day we got the call, and this time was different. This boy was available for adoption, and we were on the short list. He moved in, the adoption was finalized two months later, and our new history is being made day by day.
This blog is about our journey as a Catholic family living our lives waiting with joyful hope for the coming of our Lord.